How Do You Raise a Raisin?

A fun look at how grapes become raisins.

People have been gobbling up yummy, nutritious raisins for centuries. Ancient Greeks and Romans awarded them at sporting events and astronauts have taken raisins into space. Find out how grapes become raisins, who introduced the seedless grape, and the many uses for raisins.

Look Inside the Book:

Author & Illustrator Bios:

Pam Muñoz Ryan, author

Pam Muñoz Ryan is an award-winning author and has written many picture books for young children and novels for young adults. Her books include The Flag We Love, Hello Ocean, and Our California. She often visits schools and conferences to speak about writing and literacy. Pam lives in Leucadia, California.

Awards & Honors:

Science Books & Films 2003 Best Books for Children

Ohio Farm Bureau Award for Children's Literature (Honor Book), 2003

Editorial Reviews:

Booklist

Sticky and sweet, raisins are such a universally popular snack that they comes in boxes sized to fit a child's hand and have traveled to outer space with astronauts. In lighthearted, four-line rhyming queries, Ryan wonders where and how raisins grow and how they get from grape vines to grocery stores. Her questions are answered in no-nonsense text, with raisins' nutritional benefits, product development, and "a little raisin history" spelled out at the book's end. Brown's robustly colored art, with bold black lines and stippled details, energizes the text, depicting rows of grapevines stretching to the California horizon as well as the cutting, drying, and collecting processes. His whimsical pictures often play with the humorous rhymes, as when a contented raisin soaks in a tub of purple bubble bath with a yellow rubber duck. The no-bake recipes for raisin treats are a bonus to this delectable book, which, like its subject, packs a lot of value into a small package. –Ellen Mandel